A Truly EPIC 2021

2021 began in a state of transition - the pandemic was seemingly at its peak, and although light seemed visible at the end of the tunnel, there was no way of telling if it was freedom or an oncoming train. Needless to say, while the ever-changing and unpredictable nature of the pandemic led to an atmosphere of uncertainty and flux, the iGEM competition and by extension the EPIC programme still held strong.

The year began with a first new initiative - a short hackathon, designed to help founders find potential cofounders to kickstart their startup. This served as a taster of the Venture Creation Labs, whereby we trained our budding entrepreneurs over an intense, 3 week long entrepreneurial crash course, on the basics of business model creation, market validation and pitching. We also hosted interviews and conversations with prominent SynBio entrepreneurs such as Jason Kelly and Emily Leproust to guide and inspire our participants and the broader SynBio community. This culminated in the first demo day of the year, with teams pitching their companies to our partners.

Scoring interviews with Jason Kelly, Marc Martin-Casas and Emily LeProust!

We then gathered an amazing group of mentors to guide our teams in their work, helping them further develop their business, while opening doors to additional help. At the same time, we hosted our inaugural Summer Bootcamp, catered towards this year’s iGEM participants with the aim of inculcating the spirit of entrepreneurship early in these students. The mentorship programme subsequently transited towards the Fast-Track Programme, whereby selected VCL teams from each region who demonstrated significant progress were placed into 1-1 meetings with our select group of partners, comprising of VC investors, accelerators and incubators.

Lastly, the year ended off with our Startup Showcase, whereby we invited all early stage, iGEM alumni startups to pitch to our panel of judges consisting of Gwen Cheni from IndieBio, Daniela Lobo from CDT, and Victor Sayouz from Gourmey. The winner of the Startup Showcase, Curem Biotech, received USD 10,000 from our sponsors Benchling and Hummingbird Ventures, and our 3 finalists (Curem Biotech, RebX and BioFab) all won the opportunity to have a direct meeting to potentially enter IndieBio’s next cohort. I am also extremely proud to say that 2 of the finalists (Curem Biotech and RebX) were formed from the VCL this year, making them truly EPIC startups - RebX in particular originated from the Hackathon, our very first event!

The iGEM EPIC 2021 Startup Showcase, with our Judges and our winning team, Curem Biotech!

Cumulatively, our team at EPIC 2021 have have immense and impressive achievements this year. We trained over 90 entrepreneurs and created more than 10 successful companies, while growing our community of partners and mentors by over 50% from last year. We also hosted multiple new initiatives and events as detailed above, and interviewed many luminaries in the SynBio space such as Jason Kelly and Emily Leproust. The Data team released three insightful reports on the non-profit synbio space as well as the state of SynBio in the first half of 2021, and we grew our follower counts on social media by over 100% over the previous year - demonstrating the hard work and effort done by our media and marketing team. This is made all the more impressive by the fact that the majority of the team were working completely virtually, and these accomplishments were sustained by our collective passion for fostering synthetic biology entrepreneurship all around the world, and ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to make a difference in their local community. If you’d like to find out more about the wonderful teams that have joined us in creating the future together this year, we invite you to check out our newest D&I report here.

As the year comes to a close, we’d like to thank all our mentors, partners, sponsors and everyone in the community who has helped us along this journey. From the various committee members in each region, to our partners from all around the world, and our sponsors IndieBio, Benchling and Hummingbird Ventures - we are all grateful for your time and effort in supporting us, and we hope to have your continued engagement in the years to come as we build the future together.

Thank you to all our partners for supporting us this year!

For 2022, EPIC will grow to be bigger and better. We believe that a truly sustainable programme works at scale - so we are also scaling up our recruitment, and hosting a physical Startup Showcase cum EPIC conference during the iGEM Giant Jamboree held in Paris! At the same time, Marjolein Crooijmans, the Co-Chair of 2021, will be taking over as the Chair, while Achala Rao, Head of Americas 2021, will become the Co-Chair. It is this transition and continued growth of our committee that we at iGEM EPIC prize, and we are committed to providing our members with the opportunity to grow and advance in their responsibilities and leadership. We are confident that Marjolein and Achala will make 2022 a truly EPIC year.

If you are intending to start on your entrepreneurial journey with us, or want to support us in our mission of grooming the next generation of bioentrepreneurs, sign up as either a biofounder here: bit.ly/EPICBiofounder2022

Or as a mentor here: bit.ly/EPICMentor2022

Feel free to reach out to us at epic@igem.org if you have any questions, or if you’d just like to connect!

We look forward to seeing you all in what will be an EPIC 2022!

Cheers,

The iGEM EPIC 2021 Team